Month: June 2011

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Whenever I write here, I begin with almost nothing in mind. I rely so much on spontaneity in easing my thoughts out. It’s an inefficient method, a hit-and-miss approach, that leaves me more baffled than enlightened as to what exactly constitutes good expression. These past few days I have been reflecting like a maniac on writing, thoughts, living in general, wealth, rest– pretty much the things that people my age would find themselves thinking about right in the middle of whatever they’re doing at a certain time of the day. Daydreaming. Sometimes, I would catch myself daydreaming while giving my insights on my professor’s lecture or thinking about some alternate universe while standing in front of my class explaining epiphany or deus ex machina.

If this is my mind’s way of waging an imminently un-winnable war against the tide of ennui that grapples me, I am not very happy about it. This is tantamount to losing control, to not holding on too fast, to not being good enough to be able to rein my subconscious (I am not even sure if I am using the right concept or word in this case). This imprecision, which most would misconstrue as depth gives me that gnawing guilt. Depth I got not, only carelessness of thought.

I have done innumerable sacrilege before, and I did all of them without batting a single eyelash. I was unrepentant, devoid of guilt, indifferent. I thought that my enormity will extend infinitely, until today. When I agreed to work today, I thought it was a good idea, of earning an amount enough to buy a crisp-looking, elegant white shirt or to pay for a dinner-for-two in a decent restaurant. Until I realized that I have lost all regard, or better yet, respect, for the supernatural who asked this day be reserved for rest and quiet contemplation, which places me in the same league as your common thief, blasphemer, seducer of his neighbor’s wife, and man slaughterer. But more importantly, I have desecrated my own body, given up all respect left for time and time for rest by working on a rainy Sunday morning.

By working I become free (note the chilly Nazi-esque sound of it). And indeed I have become free, but by freeing myself from my parents’ clasps, I have allowed myself to be perpetually imprisoned, because I have chosen (?) to, by work. There’s a whole bunch of very bitter irony in the idea of choice or, more comprehensively, freedom, modern society makes us think we have. We do not really have a choice because the entire exercise is structured in a way that we’d eventually end up choosing what it has all along wanted us to choose, giving us a false feeling that that this was reached with the employ of free will. Free will is an abstraction that only exists in some yet-to-be-discovered utopia.

If a man, wiser than any of us, chooses to turn his back on work all these worldly comforts and conveniences, how do you think will he be judged by the rest of us? Exalt him because of his unbounded sagacity? Definitely not. Daft, we’d say.

After an arduous day, we agreed to have a simple dinner at the food court of a nearby SM mall, had coffee after, and went home together, and to cap the night off, we swam in the small swimming pool on the roof deck of the condominium overlooking the neurotic traffic of EDSA, overhearing the diaphanous, and surprisingly musical, noise emanating from the infamous avenue.

We waited for the lunar eclipse but eventually gave up because it meant hypothermia for us both.

Happiness thrives in the simple, the unassuming, the unadorned. We slept together, unworried about tomorrow because what we had at that moment could never be more precious, more urgent.

I dread the thought of being mercilessly hurled back to the daily grind, of being pathetically celebratory at every precious moment I am able to save for rest and for those short but sweet moments I spend with babe. But while I still have remaining time, a minutiae, to be happy about being a free man, I decided to might as well live the remaining time as if the next minute were to be the end of the world.

Though, I admit I miss running toward train doors about to close in on me, cursing inconsiderate people who simply stand and hum a tune at the right side of the escalator on a rush hour, rehearsing in my mind the lines I will deliver in front of my class, looking sweaty and disheveled at 7:30 am, and using a bunch of photocopies to wipe the perspiration on my forehead. There’s something about the morning rush that heightens all my sensory perceptions, except two. All these running and chasing after the wind imbue in me bionic eyes, ears, nose, while they blunt my taste buds and sense of touch. I am good at dodging people walking and running against my direction, I can hear hushed conversations full of intrigues between strangers, or smell the stink of fellow commuters, but my taste buds do not discriminate between bland and tasty and having been exposed to the very tight proximity of other people who are as rough and acrimonious as I, feeling the pain or discomfort, physical or otherwise, has been completely shut off from my system.

This afternoon, on my way to Katipunan, that comfortable train ride reminded me of the more exciting ones I’ve had and piqued my desires for more. I am looking forward to new experiences.

A Literature course, which I shall be teaching this semester, aside from the regular writing classes I already taught last sem, is throwing me to fits of rabid reading. My coursework in grad school at UP, some erudite-sounding seminar courses in Southeast Asia and Area Studies, are also heavily leaning toward the theoretical which will require me to read voluminous readings in class.

These mean two things: lesser time for rest and more time spent convincing myself that I shall survive until the beginning of next semester.

I can imagine that Calvin boy asking himself: what have I gotten myself into?

It’s raining hard outside, it has been so since this morning when we woke up. We took a bus together, but then I got off alone in front my place, ran upstairs to leave the external hard drive, then caught a quick breakfast at McDonald’s on Boni. I rested a bit, watched some reruns of a fairly neurotic reality TV program on cable, took a hurried bath, then hopped on a jeepney to the center of Mandaluyong. I got rained on looking for the office of that company that specializes in wedding pictures. After almost 30 minutes of waiting for all the files to be transferred, I braved the rain that showed no sign of abetting.

Soaked with rainwater, I reached my place, took a bath again to avoid getting sick (I am not really sure if there is a correlation between taking a bath after having been rained on and not getting sick) and prepared my stuff for gym. I did routines for my shoulders as having broad shoulders will compensate for the undefined abdominals that’s giving me a hard time these days. I guess the good-ol’-days of eating to my heart’s content without accumulating a millimeter of adipose tissues in my mid-section are nearing end. After all these, I’m off to work.

So here I am, staring outside on a rainy Wednesday afternoon thinking about how my day has gone so far. This, I think, is one of those forgettable afternoons that would simply pass me by, but instead of letting it go like all the other afternoons similar to it, I am documenting it to make it less forgettable than the rest.

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